As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Thursday, March 26, 2009

"It does not have, in the sense of a traditional budget, numbers..."

The President and his team walked into the worst economic crisis in decades, beset on all sides by naysayers and unhelpful ConservaDems looking to frustrate their agenda, and with the populist anger over the AIG bonuses and a perceived coziness with Wall Street, the pitfalls are large and ominous. A smart political opposition could take this environment and turn it to their advantage.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, we don't have one of those. We have one actual political party and a conservative know-nothing rump faction which literally has absolutely no ideas about how to capitalize on this political moment. They released a budget plan today without numbers. No, really.

There certainly was no hard budgetary data in the attractively designed 18-page packet that the House GOP handed out today, its blue cover emblazoned with an ambitious title: "The Republican Road to Recovery." When Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) was asked what his goal for deficit reduction would be -- President Obama aims to halve the nation's spending imbalance within five years -- Boehner responded simply: "To do better [than Obama]."

When pressed further by reporters, Boehner promised that Republicans would release their actual budget within the next few days and pointed a finger back at the president.

If you really hate yourself, you can read this hash of a plan. This one was too easy for the DNC to mock:

DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan, not surprisingly, took a swing at the ball that Republicans set on a tee: "I'm all for changing the way we do business in Washington, but proposing a 'budget' that doesn't use numbers may be too much for me. After 27 days, the best House Republicans could come up with is a 19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate. There are more numbers in my last sentence than there are in the entire House GOP 'budget.'"